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So, it begins – politicalbetting.com
So, it begins – politicalbetting.com
NEWKemi Badenoch called for rich pensioners to lose their winter fuel payments during her 2022 Tory leadership launch.Newly resurfaced clip shows she argued for means-testing. Notable given she’s criticised Labour for scrapping payments for all. https://t.co/CAbJclCBzJ
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Also, if any of the many home insulation schemes run by various governments over the last couple of decades had been any good, everyone's house would now be so well insulated it wouldn't cost that much to keep warm over the winter.
Edit: I was arguing yesterday that one of the benefits for a new Tory leader essentially conceding the next election is that it would free them from the concern of political positioning over things like the winter fuel allowance, and they could actually try and convince people how ridiculous it was.
In short Winter Fuel Payment is an indefensible benefit in its previous form and Reeves, Starmer and previously Badenoch were correct in wanting to change it. Perhaps they didn't handle the politics particularly well but they are right on the principle.
,.............
And add, Badenoch is disingenuous in her claims that her means testing is different from Labour's means testing. Of course her attacks on Starmer and Reeves are entirely hypocritical and she's been found out.
In other news, The Times have a leaked recording of Robert Jenrick saying that immigration is bad for Birmingham;
https://www.thetimes.com/article/57dcef2e-2647-4798-815f-f0985157d838?shareToken=52c7f1b3aef0795f3a50ef6ff846ca03
Though that may have been leaked by Jenrick, of course.
The idea that opposition might free politicians from political positioning is ... idealistic.
Story on the Beeb news this morning that the Triple Lock is pointing towards an inflation + £400 increase in the basic pension for April 2025.
Liberals and conservatives alike have turned on Tucker Carlson after controversial podcaster and self-proclaimed historian Darryl Cooper claimed on Carlson’s show that “millions of people ended up dead” in Nazi concentration camps.
Cooper also painted U.K. prime minister Winston Churchill as the “chief villain” of World War II.
Carlson said on X that Cooper “may be the best and most honest popular historian in the United States” when posting The Tucker Carlson Show Monday episode, which featured topics like Christianity and authoritarians like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/tucker-carlson-slammed-after-hosting-nazi-apologist-on-podcast
https://x.com/tbonier/status/1831139736477430080
Interesting, particularly as Biden didn't announce he was stepping down until the 21st.
The margin in 2020 was less than 75k votes.
He's going to shit his fucking pants when he reads up about the other guy.
https://x.com/thesundaysport/status/1831223073611104393
It bad enough when people call Twatter by other names…
https://x.com/yashar/status/1831129276026134572
No, I refuse to believe that.
Noncanonical inheritance of phenotypic information by protein amyloids
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41556-024-01494-9
All known heritable phenotypic information in animals is transmitted by direct inheritance of nucleic acids, their covalent modifications or histone modifications that modulate expression of associated genomic regions. Nonetheless, numerous familial traits and disorders cannot be attributed to known heritable molecular factors. Here we identify amyloid-like protein structures that are stably inherited in wild-type animals and influence traits. Their perturbation by genetic, environmental or pharmacological treatments leads to developmental phenotypes that can be epigenetically passed onto progeny. Injection of amyloids isolated from different phenotypic backgrounds into naive animals recapitulates the associated phenotype in offspring. Genetic and proteomic analyses reveal that the 26S proteasome and its conserved regulators maintain heritable amyloids across generations, which enables proper germ cell sex differentiation. We propose that inheritance of a proteinaceous epigenetic memory coordinates developmental timing and patterning with the environment to confer adaptive fitness...
I guess the other question is where KB would draw the line. Wherever it goes, some people will be the wrong side of the cutoff.
“Very interesting. Worth watching,” wrote fellow maverick Elon Musk. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830856758505402374
Ah those fun-loving mavericks
I can see a case of depicting Winston Churchill as villain from the American isolationist perspective. It hinges on what date you consider the start of WW2:
1937 for China and Japan
1939 for Britain, Germany, France, Italy
1941 for Russia and the USA
Churchill made great efforts to involve America in the European War, and in pushing for a Germany first policy, rather than a Pacific war against Japan.
The argument rather falls down as it was Hitler that declared war on the USA, not vice versa.
It's unfortunate most of them seem to have the emotional development of a 14 year old.
A Trump victory is essential to defense of freedom of speech, secure borders, safe cities and sensible spending!
@SethAbramson
(📣) The President of Brazil has issued a statement about Twitter:
“The world isn’t obliged to put up with Elon Musk’s far-right free-for-all just because he is rich.”
https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/1831169253426262228
But clawing it back via income tax (as is done with universal) would result in both pensioners being taxed so there really is no easy fix here - I think you end up with something like Martin Lewis suggested using council tax bands to pay it (and equally that would require combining 2 data sources to do so)
The Pacific War had to wait more for logistic reasons. It takes a while to build all those ships
Kemi says, at different times:
1) Rich pensioners should not receive WFA
2) Removing WFA from pensioners on incomes of £13K or a bit above is wrong.
These thoughts are of course entirely consistent with each other and with thoughtful reason. IMHO they are also both true.
None of this will stop attempts to demolish her over it.
NB I don't support her for the leadership, though if she gets it, life will be slightly more interesting.
If you don’t like it there are other social media
Remember, these are all the arguments lefties trot out when right wingers complain about liberal left Facebook, pre-Musk Twitter, Woke Google, etc
Personally I think pensioner (I am one) tax should be on the same basis as earned income tax/NIC, by abolishing employee NIC and setting the same IT rate for all groups.
BTW why should wealthy pensioners get cheap rail and free bus travel.
Germany was developing nuclear weapons, jet fighters, cutting-edge tanks and effectively projecting force with submarines - and could have gone further unchecked, particularly if the Soviets had been defeated.
Germany was a bigger threat to the US.
The winter fuel story might hit her a bit with members, if she fails to make the top two with Tory MPs today it will have hit her with them too
It must be the greatest and fastest decline in human history?
On topic ... ish ... my photo quota today is entitled "The Morning After the Conservative Party Leadership Announcement." * The detail is wonderful in this one - well worth a RightClick-Open Image. Which leadership contender is the bloke lying down with his drink in the middle?
* I may be lying about the title. Credit Accidental Renaissance Paintings Facebook Group, as previously.
And, on this thesis, sometime around 2000 (9/11/2001 possibly) the end of history ended, and global conflict history started again. I don't have really good reasons to think this analysis is entirely wrong but I wish I did.
Not just brandy and tobacco. Read up on the death-or-money boats.
I like her but she is insubstantial and globalist, she is also too young. Perhaps with another decade she will be more interesting
Out of a poor selection, probably Jenrick is the best, but I’m not overly hopeful
Meanwhile Reform is mainly gammons and Farage is the only star, and he’s over 60
It’s a damn shame as this Labour govt is risibly poor, already, and a good right wing opposition could mince them
Mr. Leon, it isn't even the greatest decline in British history. When the Romans left, things collapsed. De-urbanisation, trade absolutely dislocated, loss of military capacity, coinage giving way to barter, political fragmentation, endemic warfare, collapsing living standards.
"Kemi Badenoch's stardust is the one chance we have to get it right first time" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/03/kemi-badenoch-stardust-one-chance-right-first-time/
In terms of stuff that actually got used.
Their aircraft carriers for instance. Though they did turn out to have glass jaws.
It's why Yaxley-Lennon is so fucking angry all the time.
"She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s — and I own a big building there — it’s no — I shouldn’t talk about this but that’s OK I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world — sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horribly. Andrew Jackson they say was the worst of all, that he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?"
What the hell is he talking about?
The Tories need someone with FIRE. someone that hates the Left and the Wokeness, but also exudes charm and plausibility. There are such people elsewhere in the world, Britain seems unusually bereft. I imagine one will emerge in time, but it may be too late by then
Point is, there are degrees of monstrosity and it comes down to where you draw the lines.
Lots of people change their names, some for nefarious reasons, and some for their own reasons. "Michael Cain is not even his real name" insert Spongebob meme.
He’s always done this stream of consciousness shtick, and sometimes he will suddenly be funny and sharp in the middle of it. Quite odd
However he is 78 and a bit panicked and he recently nearly died of a bullet to the head, so some cognitive decline might be expected
Didn't know that about Michael Caine - thanks!
“The first party to ditch its 80 year old candidate will win”
And so it is. The Democrats
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/04/sir-tony-blair-migrants-premiership-communities/
A single helicopter with a light cannon could destroy all of them. To keep one on station, you’d need a total of 4, probably. One in maintenance, one getting ready, one in transit, one on station.
You’d just leave the survivors to drown. No need to go all Imperial Japanese Navy and murder them.
There is a slight flaw in the above. I wonder if you spot what that is?
*I suspect this is an example of the lesser spotted far right sense of humour.
Using his original name upsets him. Given that he is a nasty piece of shit, upsetting him is fine with me.
That was 8 years ago, and I'm not prepared to go through that again, so can't say if he's got worse.
PS He calls it the weave
The relative construction rates were that absurd. The US started cancelling ships, because while they could have afforded and manned them, there was no need for them. The submarines ran out of targets, for example, and most spent 1945 picking up downed pilots…
There was no way Japan could have won.
It's bull, and the people who say it need to be pointed and laughed at.